strange as it may seem, i once had my football dreams

missed yesterday's opening world cup matches, the opener between host germany and costa rica, followed by ecuador-poland. apparently the germans and ticos played an entertaining offensive-minded game, as evidenced by the 4-2 score. poland once again look to be a world cup disappointment. i thought they'd come through 2nd in the group, but doesn't look like it now.

did watch this morning, a couple of matches this morning, england's 1-0 win over paraguay and the 0-0 draw between sweden and trinidad.

sweden should have won. they played a team with much less talent and got a gift when avery john was sent off a minute into the 2nd half for drawing a second yellow on a hard but not bookable foul. at least not bookable when he was already carrying a yellow. but trinidad clamped down as teams often do when down a man. trinidad keeper shaka hislop was outstanding...made a few amazing saves. though i'm danish and thus should nominally be rooting more for sweden, i like trinidad because a) they're major underdogs, and b) i've met lots of folks from trinidad and every one of them are fun people.

the england-paraguay match was kind of eh...blah. england got a gift own-goal early on and never really got an offensive rhythm. paraguay seemed fine with packing the defense and not creating any offense.

the argentina-ivory coast game should be fun, but i've got my own game to play this afternoon.

for what it's worth, i see final 8 matches between germany-argentina, italy-france, england-netherlands and brazil-spain, semis of germany-italy and brazil-england and a germany-brazil final won by brazil. but there are always surprises in the tournament, which is what makes it so much fun.

your axe belongs to a dying nation, they don't know that we own you

if i had the gumption i'd trek out to amoeba thursday night to see the raconteurs. but seeing as it's gonna be hellaciously crowded, maybe not. or maybe. they will be back, in july at the warfield.

also coming soon? blasts from the past...the church august 20 and mission of burma (shouldn't they now be mission of myanmar?) september 2 at great american. since the clash won't be regrouping, all i need is for culture club to get back together and it'll be like high school all over again for me. only this time i can go to the shows, instead of moping because i'm under 21 and don't have fake id.

here we are in our summer years, living on ice cream and chocolate kisses

Dinner tonight was Platanos. Very good...dishes are tapas style, a Latin fusion vibe. Started with a very spicy ceviche done Peruano style. Perhaps a bit too hot, but very good. The chicken empenaditas were interesting...some savory and sweet going on...savory filling but sugar topping with sweet tomatos on the side. They might have been better served last, not before the tamale puerco which was savory but not too spicy. Last was a cold salmon dish which was not bad. A bit too much sauce so it felt a bit drowned. Nice malbec wine to accompany it.

For whatever reason I can't get this Grandaddy song out of my head. Meow, meow meow meow meow indeed.

Also sticking with me is playful sex, or rather, Asobi Seksu (which translates to playful sex...not that playful sex in and of itself wouldn't stick with me), a Japanese band and their songs New Years and Thursday.

I'd hoped the elves would have come to put away my stuff and store the boxes, but sadly no. The unpacking is left to me, it seems.

And oh my, the World Cup starts Friday. More on that later. Suffice to say that no matter the weather, this Saturday and Sunday will be all about watching the games (well, and playing a game each day).

This is the first WC since 1994 where I won't be able to see a good portion of the matches. The last two happened when I was in grad school and had a job with the flexibility to se my own hours. Now? Not so much. I assume in Morocco and Egypt the games will be on and people will gather in cafes to watch. And normally I would, but I'm not traveling to North Africa to watch soccer.

bust a move

finally, all my stuff is in the new place. of course, most of it is all over the place in boxes but it's all there. is moving stressful? apparently so. but the worst is over.

a quick plug for cunningham moving. excellent people to deal with...professional, pleasant. the best experience with movers i've ever had. that includes the impressive driving job of negotiating a big truck up and down the incredibly steep street on which i now live. also, amazingly, i was able to get cable and internet hooked up saturday on just a few days notice.

now it's just the unpacking and putting away to be done. and then prep for the trip. though said prep consists mainly of reading the morocco guide book and learning how to use the new digital camera.

being and nothingness

it's been said many times by almost everyone when they move...i have too much stuff. mostly in the form of books and cds and kitchen stuff.

it's whenever i move that i wish i were illiterate, didn't like music so much, and didn't like to cook.

(yeah, yeah, i know...e-books and an ipod)

marriage is when we admit our parents were right

Sunday was the big day for KB and Steve. An event that I was not surprised would happen, given the way she talked about him from the time they met five years ago. The reception was short and sweet, officiated by a college friend of Steve's.


Then off to the reception at the Franklin Institute...started with rooftop drinks, then into the main atrium, with Ben himself presiding...


Decor, food, music, and the company of old friends who I hadn't seen in a while all made the weekend worth a red-eye flight and whirlwind coast-to-coast turnaround.

soaking from the inside out

my god, i'd forgotten what a humid philadelphia day is like. i mean, i grew up with summer days like this. and in miami had it worse and for longer stretches of time. but after a year in the temperate climes of the bay area i'm out of practice. bleh.

the day started out fine...survived the red eye, slept most of the way through despite that it was a crowded flight. landed to a bright, sunny morning.


got to my friend's place (though he and his wife aren't here...they're westward for his brother's wedding...but their cat orpheus is around..he's good company). figured i'd hit the markets down the street for some food. first stop was a fruit stand for a nice granny smith apple (i like my apples like i like my women...tart and crisp...wait, that didn't sound right).

anyway, then to dibruno for some cheese and bread. got a nice gouda and while that was being prepared the song "mickey" (you know, "hey mickey you're so fine...") came on the radio. guy behind the counter offers a free loaf of bread to the first person to name who sang the song. me being a music freak and having a head full of useless trivia knew it instantly and said "toni basil" the people in the store gave me the "check out the big brain on brett" kind of reaction. i'm thinking..."that was easy". nice to know that my head full of useless trivia comes in handy beyond the many nights of quizzo that i did during grad school.

later on was lunch in the reading terminal market, a huge and juicy and good pulled pork sammich.

festivities later tonight, wedding tomorrow. naptime now.

** quick update...yes indeed, i did randomly run into kieran's sister at 16th & chestnut.

also forgot to note...philadelphia international airport's baggage claim takes for friggin ever.

weddings, parties, anything

another month, another wedding. the long slow march of the weddings (lots of them the last two years) nears its end this weekend. but none on the horizon after sunday's fest.

so it's 11pm red-eye back east tonight, hang out with various folks tomorrow, wedding on sunday, lunch with my parents monday and then back here monday night.

a moment on the lips, forever on the...

Is there anything chocolate can't do? Supposedly enough of it can have your brain thinking you're in love...

Perhaps chocolate's key ingredient is its phenylethylamine (PEA) "love-chemical". Yet the role of the "chocolate amphetamine" is disputed. Most if not all chocolate-derived phenylethylamine is metabolised before it reaches the CNS. Some people may be sensitive to its effects in very small quantities.

Phenylethylamine is itself a naturally occurring trace amine in the brain. Phenylethylamine releases dopamine in the mesolimbic pleasure-centres; it peaks during orgasm.

Now comes this...it makes you...smarter?

NEW YORK (Reuters) -- Chocolate lovers rejoice. A new study hints that eating milk chocolate may boost brain function.

"Chocolate contains many substances that act as stimulants, such as theobromine, phenethylamine, and caffeine," Dr. Bryan Raudenbush from Wheeling Jesuit University in West Virginia noted in comments to Reuters Health.

"These substances by themselves have previously been found to increase alertness and attention and what we have found is that by consuming chocolate you can get the stimulating effects, which then lead to increased mental performance."

To study the effects of various chocolate types on brain power, Raudenbush and colleagues had a group of volunteers consume, on four separate occasions, 85 grams of milk chocolate; 85 grams of dark chocolate; 85 grams of carob; and nothing (the control condition).

After a 15-minute digestive period, participants completed a variety of computer-based neuropsychological tests designed to assess cognitive performance including memory, attention span, reaction time, and problem solving.

"Composite scores for verbal and visual memory were significantly higher for milk chocolate than the other conditions," Raudenbush told Reuters. And consumption of milk and dark chocolate was associated with improved impulse control and reaction time.

Previous research has shown that some nutrients in food aid in glucose release and increased blood flow, which may augment cognitive performance. The current findings, said Raudenbush, "provide support for nutrient release via chocolate consumption to enhance cognitive performance."

has it been a year already?

so a year ago today i packed up the car with what the movers didn't take and set out north and west from south florida to california...

this was the proposed itinerary and slate of things to do. the actual route and trip log here. not too much deviation except that i didn't have time for bbq at the railhead in texas. also, albuquerque didn't quite go as planned thanks to something i ate along the way leaving me with a fever, the chills and shakes, and a rebellious digestive system. i did catch a minor league game in fresno, though, the grizzlies. but overall a fun trip. good times in flagstaff...99% of what i drove through between miami and norcal i'd never been to before. not sure i'd want to do a solo cross-country trip again, but this was worth doing.

not sure why the formatting is all messed up with the table. also, check out the obvious spam comment. i had to leave it up...too funny.

oh...some pics here

i said to my reflection let's get out of this place

prepped for a night of packing by scouring about for some music...among the things making it more bearable to box up my belongings...

the year of - stephen hawking

iron hero - pilot

some band of horses, live at kexp

the concretes - miss you (yes, the stones song, which i mentioned a while back)

a few tracks from dc area band middle distance runner

all the streets are crammed with things eager to be held

from life's grab-bag...

the lease is signed, the movers hired...now it's time to pack. two weeks until moving day. hopefully i can get my current place sublet. in the meantime it's cross-country for a wedding over memorial day weekend, and more planning for the trip, including getting a new digital camera. my current one is 5+ years old, a technologial dinosaur. while it's served me well, i could do with a few more megapixels and more x on the zoom if i want to take some better shots.

sadly, this show which i'd hoped to be promising was just ok. i don't want to slag any local bands here...let's just say that while i may not have liked a few of the acts, i could appreciate the time they've put into things. three of the five bands just weren't my thing (as opposed to outright suckage, which for me is when a band can't play their instruments and/or have nothing in the way of songs..not the case here). citay were alright...layered instrumentation (including thin lizzy-like matching guitar riffs and solos), lots of instruments including three guitars, keyboards, flute (which often was playing unison or harmony with the guitar riff), xylophone (evidently there's more in the way of non-rock-standard instrumentation on the record...glockenspiel for instance)...abstract song structure and lyrics...my only complaint really is that with three guitars there was some sonic crowding out of the keys and the flute. you had to really pay attention (live at least, on record that can be more easily separated) to figure out what she was doing. don't know that i'd go out of my way to see them again, but they were worth seeing this time. and who knows...if i see them again because they were in a show i was heading to anyway, i might come away liking them even more.

the highlight for me were the first band, willow willow. according to the bio on the website jessica and miranda are childhood friends, and their stage presence and harmonies certainly seemed natural, like two people who've been performing together for a long time. beyond me (click on link for mp3, recorded live at the freight and salvage) was most memorable...a sweet mid-tempo melody that starts out as a song about a girl letting a guy into her world and then drops a hammer towards the end with the line "you're nothing beyond me". no surprise that their encore was a beatles song ("she loves you")...having played in a beatle-esque band or two before, i can easily spot fellow travelers.

soccer-wise this was supposed to be a three-games in two days weekend, thanks to one league having scheduled a make-up game following all the march rains. so what happens today? our game was rained out. but yesterday was two games back-to-back (thankfully i got to play goalie in the first game) in two different leagues...a win and a loss.

i can't remember where i found the mp3 (checked the usual mp3 blogs i frequent but no mention of the band), but i've been digging on "mindstalking" from lunascape. some song samples up on the band's website.

oh, so a few weeks back i went to an art opening put together by a friend and featuring painter sharla flock and photographer john nieto. i really enjoyed flock's textured paintings with whimsical titles, though of course 3 weeks later i can't remember the titles. anyway, interesting venue for an opening...at a hair salon. and it wasn't just a one-night gig, the works are up through july.

hey i am just a city boy, and really not the country kind

This NY Times story on downtown development in Miami caught my eye because, well, I lived in Miami for a few years and I love cities. Though I'm not an urban development specialist, nor do I play one on tv, I have some considered opinions on the subject because I've lived in urban areas pretty much all of my adult life (didn't have much choice about the suburban location of my youth) and when I travel I prefer to stay in cities and wander around.

A few things about the story, which focuses on the furious development of the downtown core and stretching north up Biscayne Boulevard...

Anchoring this effort is the immense Miami Performing Arts Center, due to open in October, which includes a 2,200-seat concert hall and a 2,400-seat opera house.

"Cities like Manhattan, Boston, San Francisco — these are the examples we are using to move our downtown forward," said Johnny L. Winton, a member of the City Commission, adding that some 90,000 housing units were in various stages of construction citywide.

Of course, this being Miami, development is not exactly, uh, well regulated or planned.

But many residents, environmentalists and even developers believe that the growth has been too rapid and undisciplined to support an influx of new residents. They say that buildings are going up without adequate mass transit, parking and water systems or a workable street grid.

{...} So far, the condo development has not been accompanied by a comparable spurt in support services, like restaurants, grocery stores and dry cleaners.

"Big is not better — I don't know if it's even logical, having that density," said Michael Y. Cannon, a Miami real estate analyst. "You can't just build on every square inch of land."

Nancy Liebman, president of the Urban Environment League of Greater Miami, which argues for the preservation and enhancement of public space, agreed. "If we're going to be left with a bunch of empty condominiums, I don't think it will bode well for the future of that area," Ms. Liebman said.

Wait, overdevelopment and empty condos? How can that be? Oh, right...

Many of the condominiums under construction are expected to be bought up by foreigners as investments or second homes in the sun.

The major problem with the number of units that are planned and those that have been built in the last 5 years (South Beach, especially south of 5th street has seen a number of high rises come up) is that so many do go to investors, snowbirds and people from Central & South America who realize that US real estate is a safer haven than their local banks that might get nationalized or in local currency which might be severely devalued overnight.

The end result is twofold -- local investors flip the properties right away, driving up already high base prices, making the units not really affordable to young and/or middle-income professionals. Also, absentee owners who don't rent their units don't really add much to downtown life...they aren't there.

Why the worry about young and middle-income professionals? Because they are the core of urban development...they buy or rent their first home in cities because they want an urban lifestyle. They go out to eat, to bars, to clubs, to coffeeshops. They buy food and clothes in the neighborhood. Exclude them and you also exclude variety...if all you have are a bunch of very-high-income bankers and lawyers you don't have much of a heterogeneous population...it's mainly upper 30s and 40s+, maybe with families but also demanding more upscale and expensive establishments. To wit...

Others say the development is squeezing out the residents of surrounding neighborhoods, like Overtown, Miami's historic black area, with little concern for including low-cost housing. "The development that's happening is gentrifying the current residents right out of the neighborhood,"said Denise Perry, director of the Power U Center for social change, a local nonprofit advocacy organization. "These buildings are being built for a richer, whiter class of people."

I'd take a bit of issue with the "whiter" comment, since Miami has a fairly sizeable educated and professional Latin community (though I guess they generally are paler than the mainly Black residents of Overtown).

Anyway, the point is that vibrant urban areas need a mix of people...young, old, rich, middle and lower income...this is what makes the urban experience. To cater only to a very wealthy and thus economically homogeneous group of people, well, you might as well be building an ersatz urban theme park with a $350K entrance fee.

you don't seem to grasp your own importance

random assortment...

it's almost getting impossible to summon up any more outrage, disgust, and amazement at what's going on in iraq, what's coming from congress and what's being said in the white house press room. in fact, tony snow is on a hot streak of idiocy.

but never mind that...

to those of us who've lived in miami, this is no shock...overly aggressive drivers? cutting people off? tailgating? no signaling turns? describes miami driving perfectly. every day is like a nascar event there, even on city streets, never mind the highways. there's very little police enforcement except maybe once or twice a year, and usually then only as part of the click it or ticket campaigns. yes, miami has to be the worst city in america in which to drive. and i've driven in boston and new york.

but let's end on a (sort of, given everything) positive note

too bad, but the concretes have cancelled a bunch of dates, including their show scheduled for this coming saturday at great american. good thing i'm resourceful...other options that night include this promising show at the rickshaw stop, the writers with drinks night at the make out room, the spam all stars (speaking of miami) at the elbo room. and wow, no shit? new edition at the paramount. ok, i have no intention of going to that show, but geez, they're back? who knew? looks like the best way to start the evening is the amoeba in-store show featuring jason lytle of grandaddy.

and finally? listen to this voxtrot cover of comet gain's "you can hide your love forever". your ears will be glad you did.

hint...the voxtrot vault has tons of good stuff. bookmark the link.

woof!

from a now expired craiglist post advertising an apartment for rent...

"No large dogs. My definition of 'large' is anything big enough to injure me."

i hate myself for loving you

speaking of guilty pleasures, let's talk about the pipettes, three charming girls from the u.k. who are essentially an unabashed homage to 60's motown/brit-pop/girl-group goodness.

obscure sound has a couple of mp3s up, and like flies on sherbert links to a few acoustic numbers via skatterbrain.

you'll tap your toes, you'll wanna clap your hands (and say yeah), and you'll sing along. and then you'll feel all guilty about it because it's so crassly pop and borderline gimmicky. but then you'll hit the repeat button, or if you're on their myspace page you'll keep playing the tracks over and over.

it may be ear candy, may not have much staying power beyond this month, but damn it's fun. and it's done with such conviction you can't help but dig it.

it's exactly what we need to take our minds of off this. or, um, this.

so yeah...the pipettes. go. listen. now. you'll still love me in the morning.

everything in its right place

** update and bumped...

from the radiohead fan site, greenplastic radiohead...

It was reported earlier that San Francisco radio station LIVE 105 (who coincidentally is often credited for breaking Radiohead in the United States by airing the "Creep" import first in 1992) announced that Radiohead would be performing two shows at Berkeley's Greek Theatre in June. LIVE 105 has responded to this by saying, "No, we did not. Nothing is official."

While it is most likely true that Radiohead will be performing two dates in Berkeley, we are still waiting confirmation.

that alone will make june a great month.

**update...

grrr....the show has been scheduled for june 23, and i'll be away. of course, i'll be in fes, morocco that evening, so it's not like i should be complaining too much. and i've seen radiohead before. still...i'm going to miss this show, calexico at the fillmore, band of horses at the independent and tapes & tapes at cafe dunord.

still, between the trip, the move, and other things, june won't be all that bad, missed shows notwithstanding.

breaking news...snow falls in hell...

...and i agee with krauthammer. normally i like to poke fun at him. in fact, the only reason i read him from time to time is if i'm bored and need to get my juices flowing by seeing which narrow-minded conservative colunist i can poke holes in.

no, really. i find myself in the odd position of reading today's krauthammer piece and thinking "yeah, exactly".

he writes about the zacarias moussaoui verdict, and how it was a good thing that it ended up as life in prison and not death. and all the reasons uncle chuckie lists -- that the death penalty should hardly ever (if ever) be used (though i'm pretty much totally anti-death penalty); that if used it should be only in special cases (eichmann, hussein); and for sins of comission, not omission (moussaoui was guilty of conspiracy in 9/11, more than anything for not informing authorities about 9/11, though it's debatable how much he really knew); and not for closure for the families of the victims (the aggreived party in any murder case is society at large...justice cannot be personal, then it's revenge) -- i agree with him. i even agree with his reasoning that the jury was a bit off in how they came to the decision, even if it was the correct decision (they found moussaoui's childhood traumas as mitigating circumstance...which if used as precedent would be problematic for the justice system).

anyway, yeah. whodathunkit?

related is the story in the post about the deliberations. it sounds not unlike the basic plot for the film 12 angry men. which if you see it, make sure it's the original version. henry fonda is fantastic.

somebody took the papers, and somebody's got the key

maybe this is a harbinger or maybe it's just two blips on the local literary radar, but it's a shame nonetheless that cody's will close their flagship store in berkeley, and that a clean well-lighted place for books is up for sale.

while there are a bunch of independent bookstores in the area, when two of the more well-known and loved stores can't keep going on the way they'd like, citing on-line and chain bookstores as the big reasons for declining sales, well, you have to wonder. the owner of a clean well-lighted place is apparently opening up a smaller store elsewhere in the city.

there's lots to say here about chains, media consolidation and flow of information, and because a) i need to get back to work and b) i'd need to think those thoughts through a bit before posting now's not the time to get into it. but i'll note that art and the business of distributing art has a remarkable way of reacting to crises of inspiration and consolidation. activist artists initiate new movements, c.f. impressionism, punk rock...and aided by production and technological advancement they find ways to get their work out via non-establishment channels, c.f. the success of the indie music distributors during the last 10-15 years, especially now in the age of the mp3 blogs and on-line retailers that specialize in indie labels. (a quick plug for parasol...great customer service and good prices during first weeks of release). the internet is a major democratizing force in all of this, so the bubbling net neutrality issue is worth keeping an eye on (and taking action on...call your rep and senator) wrt how art and information flow.

to bring it back to the bookstore closings, i'll note that there are more used bookstores along a few blocks of mission than i noticed in all of miami (lived there for 4 years). there are more venues for readings and more events than i recall seeing in the years i lived in philadelphia (which is a fairly well-educated and literate city). so this area will hopefully always continue to be at the vanguard of what it means to maintain a vibrant lit scene. but the closing of these indie stores is still worth mentioning...though hopefully they won't be the first of a wave of closings.

not just another mouth, in the lipstick vogue

for pure brain-dead entertainment where you get to laugh at stupid, vain, self-absorbed and venal people you can't do much better (worse?) than mtv's "reality" show 8th and ocean.

showcasing a bunch of early-career models working the south beach scene, it's the ultimate in guilty pleasure tv.

see sibling rivalry where one twin deliberately doesn't tell her sister about a casting call that the two of them should be on, and then lies to her sister about "forgetting" when the video is proof that she hung up her cell phone after hearing from the agency booker and didn't say a word. of course, she's blonde and a model so maybe she did forget between the time she closed her flip phone and turned to her sister standing a foot away.

see the agency owner whose face is full of botox and has had a lift or four.

see talesha bitch out tracie because tracie got made that talesha changed plans at the last minute. see, it's tracie's fault for not confirming plans, not talesha's for just deciding she didn't want to go and not telling her roommate.

it has extra appeal for me as i spent a few years living on south beach, and it's cool to see some of my favorite sights. it's also funny to see on video exactly the type of people that make me glad i don't live in sofla anymore.

but yeah, wow...as guilty pleasure it's tops right now.

I met myself in a dream, and I just want to tell you

hmm...so last night i dreamt that i had a separated shoulder. it wasn't terribly injured, just noticable enough. i remember being in a kind of denial that it was actually impaired, but when i'd try to move it i couldn't. it was pretty vivid.

from the dream interpretation sites i've looked at, shoulders tend to represent strengths or burdens, either that you have too many or it's a reflection of your ability to care and nurture others. injury and impairment could mean anything from an unconscious need to heal old wounds and hurts, or it could be anxiety and insecurity. that it was the right side is associated with your outgoing nature.

what to make of it all? i have no idea. it's just a new dream for me. stress and anxiety have produced the usual heavy legs/running in quicksand/chase dreams. i've never to my recollection had a dream where a body part was actually injured or impaired like this.

i'd like to remember more of what i dream. supposedly getting into the habit of keeping a dream diary helps you to remember more of what you dream and in greater detail. just great...that means another habit i'd need to form.

now, i dive black waters

sadly, grant mclennan, co-founder of the go-betweens, died over the weekend in australia. he was only 48. you can draw a direct link from the go-betweens to bands like death cab and belle and sebastian.

i wanna live where it's always saturday

saturday was another marathon apartment hunting day featuring an 8.5 mile walk. in this city it's clear that to find a decent place you've gotta put in lots of time, both in prepping and in walking around. amazing the shoeboxes that people want to let for $1500.

after a 5+ hour day of that i was able to muster the energy for the essex green show at the rickshaw stop, and i'm glad i did. three excellent bands all trading in major melodic currency. i'm enough of a melody slut that all a band needs to to is put out a hummable melody with some decent words and i'm theirs.

east bay's seiko and salome are a good, fun pop band. mario hernandez's high tenor doesn't sound like it should be coming from him, but it works and the songs are the right mix of indie and pop. as expected, irving were fantastic. you don't mind the totally pilfered 60s/70s fuzzpop thing because they write some excellent songs and look like they're having a blast playing them. songs can be heard on their myspace page. essex green were very good as well, though couldn't match the live intensity of irving. still, the greens write some very clever and melodic songs and they play them well. plus, they use a flute now and then.

oh, some mp3s of irving's on-air set at kexp can be found here for a while...

i hadn't been to the rickshaw stop yet, and it's a great place to see bands. good sound, the red velvet on the walls gives the place some warmth, the staff are friendly. the best thing are the rickshaws, which if you get there early and can snag one, are a great place to sit for a while as the bands get ready to play.

here comes a regular

NEW 'MATS!!!

ok, maybe that's a bit of over-excitement and maybe bob stinson's dead and maybe slim dunlap doesn't play guitar on it and maybe chris mars doesn't play drums on it (though he did sing back-up) but a new replacements song! just heard it on kexp, and well, as described in the rhino press release for the new best of compilation it does sound like it could have come off of pleased to meet me. doesn't approach things like "left of the dial" or "bastards of young", but it's not bad from first listen.

a song sample is available here. or go the kexp archives and enter may 4, 5:04pm as your search criteria. it'll be up for 14 days, though i'm sure they'll play the song once a day (for {i think} copyright reasons they can't have a song-title search feature).

we got ideas from some dangerous thinkers, we put our mouths up to some dangerous drinks.

saturday and monday are shaping up to be entertaining...some excellent music saturday from essex green and irving and some good lit for a good cause monday at the progressive reading night at the make out room.

essex green mp3 here and more songs here.

have i mentioned how much i love living here? now that rainy season's passed and it's sunny and nice...there's good music, good culture, good food, good weather...should have moved here years ago.

what's the world got in store for you

ever wonder what your travel footprint looks like? thanks to douwe osinga you can make a map of the u.s. states and countries around the world that you've visited.

in the city there's a thousand things i wanna say to you

porchlight was a good time. huge crowd, good stories. ted brinkley's small jazz argosy provided a musical score for two film segments, the first a 5 minute or so short of turn-of-the-century san francisco, shot from a cable car as it wends its way along market towards the ferry building. i'm sure with a little research i can locate the title and more details, but well, i should get to doing the work for which i'm paid. the second piece was a montage of clips from hollywood features filmed in sf, including dirty harry, the presidio, 48 hrs, vertigo and it came from beneath the sea.

stories included tony dingman's recounting of his being hired to be nicolas cage's drinking coach on leaving las vegas, tara jepsen's tale of trying to get an indie script produced, and adrian belic relaying his caper about trying to cross from afghanistan into tajikistan as a stowaway aboard a container ship, just as the fall 2001 us-northern alliance military operations were at full pace. jeannie epper provided the most "hollywood insider" moment of the night...the first line of her bio reads that she did the stunts for lynda carter on wonder woman, and you really can't get much cooler of a bio-line than that.

the highlight though, was cathy begien's emotional retelling of how her mother came to not just accept but to embrace the fact that her daughter was not going to pursue a traditional career, but would instead be an artist. her closing move was to offer up a toast to the room, the spirit of the toast being to follow your heart.

the soundtrack for the ride in and out of the city was the detroit cobras' latest baby, one of those "been out for a while but i'm just getting to it now" records. a fun update of old and obscure stax-volt, soul and motown songs, mucked up with dirty guitars. check out "i wanna holler (but the town's too small)".

you take your refuge in some written fiction

**update, monday 5/1, 4pm...

apparently boy did stephen colbert do quite the number at the white house correspondent's dinner this weekend. pissed off the decider-in-chief by lampooning a bit too harshly. you decide for yourself by either watching the rebroadcasts on c-span (if you can find it on the schedule) or on-line here (part 1) and here (part 2). note that some of the images on freevideoblog might now exactly be safe for a work computer.

better yet, watch it at youtube....

part 1, then part 2, then part 3.

or...not. copyright issues (at c-span?)

it's up at the c-span website, as well as here (though without the taped piece featuring helen thomas). the taped piece is at crooks & liars, which covers the 2nd half of the speech.

(despite this) is there anything better than youtube? bill simmons puts it best, in an article about why he likes sports. but it's applicable to everything you can find on youtube, which by now seems the entirety of human existence that's ever been taped or filmed...

Reason No. 877: Youtube.com

Just in the past week, I watched a clip of an old Mike Tyson interview with Jim Gray where he repeatedly praises Allah, then vows to eat Lennox Lewis' children. I watched a clip of A-Rod wiping down his bat during a game in the most inflammatory way possible. I watched a montage clip of horrible Jets draft picks over the years, followed by the crazed reactions of the Jets fans as the picks were announced (did anything top the Jeff Lageman pick?). I watched a clip of an interview in which an aging Iron Sheik repeatedly vowed to, um, humiliate other wrestlers in the most emotionally scarring way possible. I watched the famous clip of Joe Namath trying to kiss Suzy Kolber. I watched the clip of the "boom goes the dynamite!" guy for the umpteenth time. I even watched the clip of Roddy Piper slamming the coconut against Jimmy Snuka's head.

So here's my question: In a million years, did you ever think this would happen? One decade ago, I didn't even have an e-mail address or know what the Internet was ... now I can watch Piper slam a coconut against Snuka's head whenever I want? What will the world be like 10 years from now? Is it possible to procrastinate for 24 hours a day? Are we headed that way?

colbert's routine is worth the time to watch, if you haven't already. if you already watch the colbert report (and if not, why not?), you'll know what to expect. full transcript is here.

monday night's activity looks to be the monthly porchlight storytelling series at the swedish american hall above cafe du nord. should be interesting, as it's all about working in the film industry.

man about town

another day of apartment hunting and wandering around town, this time through the mission, noe valley, nob hill, tenderloin, civic center and hayes valley. as i've mentioned before, i love walking through walkable cities, and san francisco is an especially amazing city for wandering, especially on a mostly sunny and mild day, which yesterday was.

starting in the mission, the first leg of the journey covered over 6.5 miles, and took me through the mission, noe valley, up to castro street, back through the park area, and even more retracing to meet up with a wandering companion. after all that hiking, a brief respite for very good tacos (carne asada and chorizo) at taqueria el buen sabor on valencia.

included was a side trip down a mission alley to check out a mural done by a friend of wandering companion...
...there were also potatoes...

nob hill was the next destination, so on we went to bart. the swing up nob hill featured a quick apartment viewing, a walk through grace cathedral, and then sit down at cafe gallery on mason to grab cup of coffee. while i love that they use la colombe coffee (from philadelphia), the brewing strength was pretty weak. i lived in philly and went to la colombe often. their coffee shouldn't be wimpy.

that was all followed by another mile or so trekking along post st...
...to dinner at chai yo (ginger salad, ginger tofu with scallions) then over to hayes ave for drinks at place pigalle.

in total, about 10 miles walked during the day (hopefully i'll have my legs for a soccer game this afternoon). no lease signed, but that just means another excuse to wander some more.

a brief word of praise for the g-map pedomter. if you want to know how far you've walked, or how far you'll need to walk, it's an awesome tool.

love with the proper congressman

via daily kos...

wow. i mean...WOW. this could be huge. lobbyists providing sitting congressmen with call girls. wow. and apparently it's been going on for about 15 years. wow.

nothing like a juicy sex scandal to turn d.c. upside down.

i wonder how many of those who end up implicated in this mess will be some of the more vocal family values moralizers, and more specifically, it'll be interesting to see how many of them pilloried bill clinton for his indiscretions.

i am messy marvin

for the second time in less than a week i spilled coffee on my necktie. now i'm not nuts about having to wear a tie, but it's what the boss wants and they pay me well, so no big deal. plus, i have generally good taste in neckwear, thus i look good.

but if this continues, i'm going to end up having to take all my ties to the cleaners. though i should feel lucky i was wearing the tie, because the white shirt would have been wasted by the coffee (though not if i had been wearing one of my cool vintage thin ties...they look great, but don't catch as much errant coffee).

so the tie was more like a bib. which is maybe what is should start wearing while coffee's in the mug...a bib.

mission to morocco - update

well, the tickets are booked and on june 15 it's off i go from sfo. get to cairo (via frankfurt) early evening june 16, stay a week then off to morocco june 23. back to sfo on july 2 via cairo, including a flight that gets to cairo (from casablanca) about 12:40am, then i leave 5 hours later for the journey home (via frankfurt and denver).

now it's all about crafting some sort of itinerary that includes cairo, pyramids, mt. siani, alexandria, casablanca, marrakech, fez, essaouira...doing it all in a little over two weeks.

post hoc ergo propter hoc? or...

...don't you wish your boy/girlfriend was hot like me? or beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

so on saturday, watching some firemen do their stuff during a fire drill, a coworker asks me "why is it that all firemen are hot?"

i thought for a second, and my answer to her was that whether or not they are objectively hot they become hot by virtue of being firemen. that is, same guy, dressed the exact same way, talks to a girl in a bar. she asks what he does, he says "fireman". he's instantly hotter than an actuary (no offense to actuaries intended or implied, it's just that there's a reason the marlboro man doesn't wear a green eye shade and sit at a computer).

i've long had a corollary theory that women in new york are generally hotter by virtue of being new yorkers than if they look the same, are dressed the same and in d.c. or philly or boston. something about the way they carry themselves, the nyc style...that i'm starting to develop a similar thing about san fran women as well drives home the point that it's all context, the people we find attractive.

and this is a different thing than what makes a better long-term partner, explored by leah over at agirlandaboy. i'm talking feel it in your guts/loins hot.

there's a related thing having to do with bollywood romances, but this post is toolongalready and i'm too tired from a long 5 days of work and too little sleep, a soccer game in which i played crappy in net and sprained a finger.

i'm in los angeles today, it smells like an airport runway

quick in-and-out trip to l.a. tonight and tomorrow. i won't even leave the immediate aiport vicinity...off the plane, to an airport hotel, work-related functions tonight, tomorrow morning and late afternoon, then back up here by 6pm. i've done trips like this before, and it's always so surreal to me...traveling without seeing anything.

and wow, that's two death cab song references in a row.

your heart is an empty room

Back in the fall I twice saw previews for The War Within and wanted very much to see the film. For whatever reason, it didn't get a wide theatrical release and I was excited to see it out on dvd, so added it to the Netflix queue. It makes a good companion piece to Paradise Now, which I saw a few weeks ago.

Written by and starring Ayad Akhtar, and directed by his Columbia Film School compatriot Joseph Castelo, The War Within is an intense look at the personal and interpersonal conflicts that arise when a Pakistani man, Hassan, is driven to wanting to commit an act of suicide terrorism on American soil.

Akhtar is sort of an accomplished unknown, clearly someone to watch. He's crafted a taut, tense script with believable dialogue. It's not preachy, it's not overwrought or maudlin. He plays Hassan full of brooding conviction, a man who bears the physical and mental scars of his time being interrogated and tortured in a Pakistani jail after having been snatched off the streets of Paris. Hassan isn't presented as a raving fanatic. It's almost as if he's an everyman who just happens to have come to the US on a mission to wreak havoc, death and destruction. He has become, though, loveless, unable to connect to anything or anyone save for his hatred of the west and his hope for salvation through the ultimate sacrifice to his cause.

There are glimpses as to why Hassan becomes radicalized, but they are fleeting and surface-level. Though it might have provided some more depth to have explored that territory a bit more, too much focus might have distracted from the central story, which revloves around how two boyhood best friends ended up in such different places, and what happens when they confront each other's new realities.

The relationship between Sayeed and Hassan has become strained. Sayeed is a physician, having accepted some Western ways and befriending Americans. Hassan views America as an evil oppressor. Still they bound together by old forces -- the obvious attraction between Hassan and Sayeed's sister Duri (played by the astonishingly beautiful Nandana Sen, daughter of Nobel Laureate economist Amartya Sen. She's fast becoming a Bollywood star) and the budding relationship that Hassan develops with Sayeed's impressionable young son Ali. In a key moment, Sayeed grdugingly allows his friend, who he by then knows to have become orthodox, to teach Ali how to pray.

It's not perfect, but it is often gripping, and you come to care about the characters, even Hassan, as you hope that he lets go of his hate and accepts what could be a fulfilling life among good friends in a land that offers him, a Western educated (schooled in the US and France) engineer, plenty of opportunity.

As I've written before, seeing and being moved by a film like this is not any tacit or explicit affirmation of the motives of terrorists. This kind closed-mindedness, given national voice by the likes of Charles Krauthammer, shows a fundamental misundertanding of one of the main purposes of art -- to make us confront our interpretations of reality and understand why we think the way we do and understand why others might come away with a completely different view of the same reality.

emotional rescue

Reading the aforementioned Year of Living Dangerously, I was particularly struck by this paragraph, as it could have been written about me (last paragraph in chapter 2):

Like most men who live alone, and have reached their maturity single, Hamilton had done so by numbing his feelings at crucial times, and turning to action for relief. Not selfish in a petty way, he nevertheless preferred the odourless, ethereal tensions of the world and his job to other people's emotions - with which, perhaps, he was mostly at a loss. And so he was often calmly unaware of their true natures, intensities and needs, floating and dissolving around him.

Now, this isn't me exactly -- I'm hardly a loner, I generally prefer being around people to being by myself. But the essence of what Koch writes resonates with how I see myself sometimes -- being more often self-identified as single rather than coupled, I tend to keep very busy with lots of extra-curricular activities -- music, soccer, volunteer fundraising, photography -- and I tend to keep the world at (a slightly bent) arm's length. It's not that I don't notice or care about the "true natures, intensities, and needs" of others (I'm actually very observant and sensitive to other people's emotions), I just don't usually let those kinds of things in too deep. It's easier not to...emotionally it's safer. The result is I come off as much more aloof and removed than I actually am. It's also a product of the terrible shyness that I had when I was younger and which I have only in the last 6-8 years mostly gotten over. Not completely, but mostly.

Not sure if this is a symptom or a function of my singlehood. It fits though, with a comment that someone recently made about my pictures -- "there's no people in your photos". Some of that stems from my reticence to take candid shots of people, my feeling that I'm intruding into their space. But a good deal it is in line with the way in which Koch portrays Guy Hamilton.

we should take a walk but you're such a fast walker

One of my favorite things to do when visiting a new city is to walk it. Pick an area and explore it, block to block. It's the kind of thing I tend to do on my own, mainly because I like to set my own pace and follow whatever whim hits me as to where to go, where to stop in for a spell...

I've been here 10 months and planning to stay a long time, so I'm not a visitor. Still it was, then, that I decided today to take advantage of the cancellation of the Sunday soccer league game to spend the afternoon wandering the Mission District, scoping out where I want to live, getting a sense of the character of the area. A mostly sunny day punctuated by the odd rain shower, it was a good day for meandering.

Starting from the 16th & Mission BART station I went up to Valencia and then up towards 25th Street. The highlights of Valencia are of course the numerous book stores, thrift shops, furniture stores and places to eat and drink. Stopped in Community Thrift and poked around a bit.

The best part (for me) was the selection of used books, and I picked up The Year of Living Dangerously and Jay McInerney's Model Behavior for $1 each. I'm already 70 pages into The Year, which is one I've been wanting to read since seeing the Peter Weir film adaptation (with Mel Gibson, Sigourney Weaver and Linda Hunt doing a gender-bending turn as a male photographer). In a similar vein I need to get around to reading The Quiet American (and more Graham Geene for that matter)...something about that period of Southeast Asian history and the intersection of post-colonialism and the West's fear of communism spreading throughout the region has long intrigued me. Way back I enjoyed Bright Lights (though the movie version was crap), but nothing McInerney's done since has realy grabbed me. This one is supposed to be pretty good.

Though my goal at the outset was to sample a taqueria or three, I ambled into the Javalencia Cafe and got a very tasty smoked turkey sandwich. The bread was fresh and flavorful, and the honey-mustard dressing worked well with the tomato and sprouts.

After working my way up and along the main streets and side steets, I got to Dolores Park just as the sunshine was at its best of the day.


Unfortunately for the kids, the effects of the rain were still evident...
...though some kids did manage to play on the puddle-enclosed slide and jungle gym.

After some time in the park, I worked my way up Guerrero from 18th to 24th, stopping in at Cafe Que Tal to escape a brief rain with some coffee and a chocolate chip cookie.

The Mission reminds me in many ways of the San Telmo area of Buenos Aires...
Clearly the Latin influence has something to do with it, but beyond that it was the edgy but natural energy of the neighborhoods, the sense that the people who live there are happy to be in a place with some character, and make an effort to maintain that vibe. It's also because of the mix of people...like San Telmo, the Mission isn't (well, yet anyway) a bunch of gentrifiers...it's really an "from all walks of life" kind of area.

The effect of the day is to confirm my suspicion that the Mission is where I want to live, preferably from about 18th-25th, between Valenica and the park. The side streets like San Jose and Fair Oaks are especially appealing...close enough to the action but not right in the middle of it. Now the fun part...actually finding a place to live.

everyone's a critic and most people are djs

Neither rain nor gloom of day will deter me from a farmer's market trip and more importantly from playing soccer today. First match in almost a month. Mud? ha...i laugh at you.

(update...4:30)...tie game, 3-3. I was in goal for the second half, playing first half at sweeper back. I did let in the last goal with a few minutes to play on a shot I arguably had no chance at saving...point blank, wide open. I suppose I could have come out to cut the angle, but if I do that even a second too soon the guy's got an easy chip over my head, and right now he's a better striker than I am a keeper. I could say that the defender shouldn't have let the guy turn to shoot, but it's never cool to pass the buck. Bottom line, I didn't make the save. Still, a well-played and fun match. And no mud...we were on an artificial turf field.

The haul at the famer's market was some good looking spinach, more of the tangelos mentioned a week or so back, avocados (need to get some cheese and french bread to go with them) and green beans.

The playlist as of late...

* The M's - Mansion in the Valley. More mp3s on their website
* The Hard Tomorrows - Put Yourself Out.
* Fountains of Wayne - Valley Winter Song (no mp3 available, so here are the chords and lyrics). must be all the rain...i find myself changing the chorus to "the rain is coming down, in our bayside town, and it's been falling all month long"
* The Hold Steady - The Swish
* Kelley Stoltz - Rescue (echo & the bunnymen cover)

Finally saw Amelie last night and thoroughly enjoyed it. One of those I just somehow hadn't gotten to until now. And that includes the month that it sat in its Netflix sleeve on the living room table. The main point here is to point to this (unintended) hysterical review of it on the world socialist webiste. Among my favorite lines..."All of Jeunet’s characters in Amelie are semi-proletarian, but far removed from what might be regarded as ordinary." Someone paid attention in film school when they covered Marxist rhetorical critique. (/snark)

suddenly this summer

wow, all of a sudden i'm realizing that summer is almost upon us. sure, calendar-wise it's still 60 days or so away, but so many things seem to be intertwined and happening a once that i need to get moving now...

* planning for the trip. the logistics of doing both egypt and morocco are a bit daunting. airfare's pretty steep, but manageable. but there are so many permutations on getting to-from-from-to that sussing out the best itinerary may require a travel agent.

* moving to the city. east bay's nice, but i'm a city guy. so i move before the trip? secure a place for a move immediately after getting back? if right before or after, can i sublet my place in east bay? if not i'll be paying double rent. or do i wait til the lease is up in august?

all this, and the work queue looks to be mighty involved, both with job-specific stuff and independent research i want to do, including a paper proposal that was accepted for publication, so i'll actually have to...well...do the analysis and write the damn thing.

plus, then there's you know...life. having fun. there are books to read, movies to see, music to hear (and play, maybe), improv classes to take, surfing to do more of, soccer to play, people to meet...

to the question of a place to live in the city, any leads on a place are welcome. main requirement is within 10-15 minutes walk (or muni, but preferably walk) of a bart station. option to get parking would be nice as well but not a deal breaker.

talking with the taxman about poetry...

...and procrastination. Yes, I haven't done my taxes yet. Guess what's in store for this evening...

(update, 11:20pm)...refund's not quite what i expected, but the vagaries of relocation expense reimbursement and some consulting money lowered it. but at least it's done.

the soundtrack for the night was kelley stoltz's latest and the violent femmes first. mp3s from stoltz are here. in particular, check out his echo & the bunnymen covers. "rescue" is pretty damned good, which for me is saying something as that's one of my favorite echo songs.

sunny day real estate

A reminder of what a sunny day feels like...

...and everywhere

a rain soaked and busy work-day, but the goal was the calexico in-store at amoeba, and it was worth the trip. they hit the right notes, struck the right chord, set the right mood. i almost didn't go, but i said "screw the rain" and even found parking in the haight. go me.

that was followed by a zipping trip downtown to meet friends for a dinner at the grand cafe at monaco hotel. my dish was a bacon-wrapped pork tenderloin with some sort of pork thing elsewhere on the plate. essentially, lots of pig. but very good, in that french bistro sort of way. good wine, good company...i'm now sad that the conference is over.

driving home i was transfixed by the concretes cover of the stones "miss you". also from that record, Layourbattleaxedown , the song "sugar", featuring the line "he gives me sugar again instead of salt, and it keeps me running back for more".

i'll ask nicely now...please...someone...stop the rain. please?

here and there

Great dinner last night at Fior d'Italia in North Beach. Excellent company of good friends made better by good food and wine. We started out with a special antipasti plate featuring prawns sauteed with lemon and garlic, dungeness crab, tomato with basil and mozzarella and melon wrapped in prosciutto. Among the dishes ordered were a cioppino, gnocchi, a rack of lamb...our waiter was a total pro who didn't mind the slightly ribald talk towards the end, even participated (with a good joke) and gave us each a small serving of a delicious after-dinner wine. High recommendation for an SF landmark. Actually ended up walking back from North Beach to my car parked at a lot on Mission at 5th. But the clear, cool evening made for great walking.

Also good on the eating meter was Sunday night's post-receptioning taco expedition to the Mission (Taqueria Jose, 24th & Mission). High marks for the place from a very diverse group of folks, some very wise in the ways of tacos, some virtual neophytes. I had the ceviche tostada and a chorizo taco, both very good.

I always get nervous recommending restaurants and movies to friends, and I'm always relieved (and validated?) when the recs turn up to be good.

An odd thing about having the conference in my home town -- I felt oddly disconnected from the immediacy and totality of the experience. Since I could mix work and conference, I did, splitting a few days between office and conference, so I wasn't around the whole time for it, and I didn't have a hotel room in the immediate vicinty (I commuted back and forth each day). So I was there but not there. The no close-by room also meant that the usual crash time you can have between sessions and the evening activities wasn't really there. Hard to keep going for 12-14 hours a day without any real quiet and sequestered downtime. Still a productive time, getting great ideas for projects and feeling reconnected to my work in a more global sense, stepping away from the minutia of the daily grind.

Did spend a bit of downtime yesterday reading and people-watching in Union Square and more importantly searching the racks at Rasputin. Among the haul was older stuff from Calexico and the Concretes and the latest from Matt Pond PA. Tonight of course is the Calexico in-store at Amoeba. So musically and foodly, a good couple of days.

talk amongst yourselves

From today's Wired Campus Blog at the Chronicle of Higher Education...

From the Ivory Tower to the Internet

An article in U.S. News & World Report takes note of a less-than-shocking phenomenon: Graduate students, it turns out, are among the Web's most devoted bloggers. (Young people with high-speed Internet access and plenty of opinions make good bloggers? Who'd've thunk it?)

But the story is well worth reading because it offers some nicely detailed glimpses into the different motivations of student bloggers. Some of the blogs are, as stereotypes suggest, outlets for political musings or personal minutia. But others, like Oh, Snap! (written by a graduate student in education) and Over My Med Body! (a handsome blog penned by a medical student) give readers an uncensored, inside look at the upper levels of academe. Those bloggers often find themselves wondering how to reconcile their online personae with their academic pursuits: Should they use pseudonyms? Can they criticize their colleges? What if a professor finds their blogs?

-----------
The sad truth might be, however, that...

every day is like sunday

amazing what a few (ok, 9) good hours of sleep can do. back and ready to go at it. there's actually an interesting panel on community college transfer issues. hopefully it won't be in one of the glorified closets that the moscone conference center calls meeting rooms. and tonight is reception hell, with too many conflicting events. what's a guy to do when there's so many people to see? weather-wise, the call is for more rain...apparently yesterday was just a brief respite.

another sunny day, i met you out in the garden

What a gorgeous friggin day. GORGEOUS. The scene at Yerba Buena...



Which of course didn't stop me from a late afternoon session at the Chieftan with an old friend...


Hefeweizen is such a great sunny day beer.


Long day but a good day. Well received paper commentary, which I appreciated, since the inspiration for the comments came all of a sudden, in a mad rush, and it was all I could do to keep my pen up with my brain as I was writing down the notes.

Then it was hours of missed connections and connected connections, and now it's apparent that the last few weeks, and in particular the last few days, have caught up with me.

now it'szzzzzzzzzz.........

pride (in the name of {?})

a question posed among friends, to which no satisfactory answer was given...

when it becomes obvious that two people who want the same thing are sending very indirect (maybe even passive-aggressive) but obvious messages to each other through an intermediary of any sort...at what point is the time to shit or get off the pot? what's gained? what's lost? who's first (and why)?

so. central rain (i'm sorry)

what a shock, another rainy norcal day. the out-of-towners couldn't quite understand our frustrations. no matter, good to see some infrequently seen friendly faces again.

dinner was colibri...mexican food served tapas style. some chorizo con quesofundido, lamb shank, chicken, filet mignon, good margaritas. mmm...good.

post dinner was mellow drinks at hotel rex (in the comfy chairs from the picture).

great that i'm up at 1am posting when i have a relatively early day tomorrow, including a morning session. bleh.

all tomorrow's parties

last night's activity was the opening at 111 minna. interesting scene, art just so-so, with the exception of adrienne yan's drawings, which i really dug. followed by a light bite at zebulon. excellent spring rolls. and what one of the people writes in the yelp review is spot on...music's a bit too loud for the room. just a touch mellower..set the mood, don't make it impossible to talk...it's a small place.

saturday i'm going to try and convince my out of town friends (or at least those with art habits like mine) to go to the make out room for writers with drinks.

monday might be eef barzelay, though after a big group dinner it might be hard to get people rallied. but i have enough julie mccoy in me (somehow i'm always the cruise director) that i think i can swing it.

tuesday early evening is calexico's in-store at amoeba.

this in addition to (or in spite of?) the countless receptions and lunches and coffees and other things that are part of the social aspects of the conference. oh yeah...the panels and presentations too.

some weeks there's just too much to do. (not that i'm complaining)

party at ground zero

so last saturday? at a local farmer's market? i strolled by a stand and the guys had some orange-looking things out for sample. turned out to be tangelo slices (i didn't realize it was season for them just yet). i took one.

amazing...

...like a citrus party in my mouth.

for some reason, i only bought three. should have bought a dozen at least. no reason to mention this other than to say if in the next week or so you see tangelos at a farmer's market or some other place where you get good produce, buy some. the first of the season seem to be extra special good.

-----

(modified...weekend activiy musings to its own post)

mission to morocco

with apologies to pat rapa for, uh, borrowing his concept (**), i hereby launch "mission to morocco". yes, tour guide, egypt is part of it. but i like alliteration, so "mission to morocco" it is. though i guess i could make it "mission to morocco, expedition to egypt".

the basic 2+ week itinerary would be:

* fly to cairo, spend 6-8 days in egypt. a hike up sinai will be part of the deal. there will also be pyramids.

* cairo to either marrakesh or casablanca, and a couple of days in each city.

* then, as mentioned previously, a trek along the atlantic coast, chilling, eating fresh seafood, surfing, chilling.

* get to the north coast, take a ferry to spain, then a train to madrid and fly home.

why a mission? no reason really. i figure i need to state it in a public forum and to as many people as possible so that i actually make it happen.

maybe this is what i was thinking about when i mentioned being on the verge of something. or maybe it was one of the many things i sensed coming down the pike (though not all are coming exactly as i sensed originally, but since when is intuition 100%?). point being, the thought's in my head and won't get out. so, i'm on a mission.

** pat, if you read this...you really need to blog the e-mails from the mission to denmark thing. they were some of the funniest damn things to read. and one of these days you should go to denmark.

ps -- unlike pat's mission, mine will not include a fundraising pitch. though donations will not be turned away.

bright future in sales

two professionally related things...

* I wrote a few weeks back about Stanford's announcement that entering students with family income of less than $45,000 would be free of tuition costs, and the family contribution would be halved for students from $45K-$60K. Since then the University of Pennsylvania announced that it would provide grants to cover costs for students from families with income below $50K. Harvard, apparently in the next seat around the poker table, upped the income limit to $60K. A few years ago there was even talk (in a GOP-controlled Congress no less!) about regulating tuition costs. It appears that the market is starting to correct itself a bit, and after years of being slow to recognize the problem there's now a flurry of movement to counteract tuition costs that over the past two decades have far outpaced family income. It will be interesting to see who raises the stakes...it really has become like a poker game.

* In a shocker (ok, not really), research indicates that younger Gen-X scholars claim that they want transparent tenure standards and more balance between work and personal life. I gave up a tenure-track job for a research-based administrative job precisely because I wanted to stop feeling like every spare minute should be devoted to work in order to earn tenure, and I wasn't even sure exactly what the standards for tenure were. While I respect people who are incredibly devoted to scholarship and are very prolific, I decided that I wasn't ready to give up all of my free time for the chase. I like a job where I can have KEXP playing in the background, and where I don't take work home with me as often. I work hard and I enjoy what I do, but I've finally shed the "grad school guilt" complex of always feeling like I should be working.

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Totally unrelated, but worth mentioning (since I saw the story while searaching the Harvard note) is this bit about ligament regeneration work being done at Children's Hospital in Boston. I've had acl replacement and the knee's still not to 100%. Related to the acl trauma I also still have meniscus issues. What I wouldn't give to have the meniscus fully healed and regenerated. Microfracture seems to be one option, but it's not guaranteed, especially for patients over 30.

i want to glide through those brown eyes dreaming

current favorite obsessions...

the concretes -- fiction. an instant wow song. the guitar figure's embedded in my brain. not sure how long the link will be up, so get it now. more importantly, buy the record. song snippets of each song on "in colour". more downloads at the band's website.

wilco -- i am trying to break your heart, live version from kicking television. yeah, it's like the umpteenth time i've mentioned wilco lately. but seriously, i've been playing this song, handshake drugs and shot in the arm (they're in a row on disc 1 of kicking television), non-stop for the better part of two weeks now.

anything to take the edge off weeks upon weeks of rain, no soccer games (thanks to rain and travel and work), and a $450 car repair bill.

worker's playtime

there's a professional conference in town this week, one that i go to every year. between that and another conference held in the fall, it's the one of the few chances i have in any given year to see most of my friends and colleagues from around the country, so it's a good professional and personal event. lots of good eating, drinking, socializing and yes, even professional development and interesting research presentations. this is the first year, however, when i've been to a major conference that's in the city where i'm living. which means it feels less like the special event that it normally is, and more like just part of the work-week.

the session i'm doing is on saturday -- usually doing a saturday session is no big deal...when you're away, there's not as fine a line between weekday and weekend. you're just at the conference. now i'll have to get up early on a saturday and trek to the conference center. i should also probably get around (sooner rather than later) to reading the papers on which i'm supposed to be giving expert commentary (i'm discussant at the session, which means i give public critique of the papers).

the conference being here also means i'll have to play host...recommending restaurants and other places to go, like a good dive bar or two. the latter of which i know already (go figure) - but then i'm usually able to find a good bar in a strange town anyway (again, go figure).

what was i thinking when i let go of you

there's a peculiar irony, two intertwined ones actually, to being single and actively dating in one's mid-30s and beyond. if you have a good job that keeps you busy and you also occupy yourself with lots of "extra-curricular" activities it constrains the time necessary for getting to know someone and making the right choice.

the first irony is a product of the very experience we count on to help us make good decisions sometimes results in us using too narrow a filter. the other (and related) irony is that often we get into those extra-curriculars not just for the intrinsic value of the activity itself but to meet people with whom to be friends or lovers. even though most of us won't admit that out loud, we know it's true that the single among us do these things as much to meet potential mates as anything else. and those of us who tend to be active will be more attracted to more active people. couch-potatoes and active people rarely are a good match.

for simplicity's sake i'll suggest that you can put any date into one of three groups -- no, maybe and yes. sure, there are stronger maybes than others, but the point here is to be brief...(yeah yeah, i know it's an essay about the dangers of too quickly and ruthlessly cutting to the chase)

clearly there are times when you know for certain something won't work. and usually (hopefully) it's obvious to both people right away. but sometimes that decision gets made not because the person is truly incompatible, but because of life's demands. we feel the need to cut to the chase, to quickly and efficiently filter out the noise from the signal. and in that rush we probably put a "maybe" too quickly into the "no" pile, usually based on some checklist derived from experience and used exactly because we're so busy that we feel we need the filter. and not that this is a bad thing. if you don't learn from experience you're going to make the same mistakes over and over. with the availablity of on-line dating sites, even if there's a dry spell of meeting people through traditional means, it's been made very easy to go back to the aquarium and pick out a new fish or three. it's perceived as no big loss to maybe throw back one that you at first thought didn't suit you. (related to all this but its own essay is how the myth of "instant chemistry or nothing" has been drilled into us thanks to hollywood and in particular shows like the bachelor(ette)).

when you both know it's a maybe is when it gets most complicated. here's where you really need to put in a bit of time to figure it out. but when both people have ski trips, shore trips, running clubs, soccer games, softball games, book clubs, volunteer work...before you know it your week, weekend and month is booked. so the potential of the "maybe" fizzles, as would any flame die for lack of proper fuel and attention. it takes some courage to step away from standing commitments and get to know a maybe or two (or three). it also takes some work between meetings...e-mails, phone calls...enough to keep things going but not too much to come off as clingy or needy.

even when we meet the obvious "yes" our schedules are so pre-booked that it can be a week between meetings. you still have these prior commitments. you still have lots of people counting on you to do things. but you really want to get together with mr/ms yes. you also don't want to be "that guy" who just dumps his friends and softball team every time a woman gets hold of him. and here you see it as even more important to make the time, that you feel there's something immediate and pressing at stake. but still...you have things to do.

and what if we make the wrong choice between two definite maybes, or between what we thought was a yes and a definite maybe? what then? go back to one you let go but are still intrigued enough by that you can't get her out of your head? that takes some courage and letting go of pride on both ends. again, with on-line dating you can easily just turn your profile back on and pick from the new arrivals who come in daily (which is a whole other essay on disposable society). but you don't know until you ask.

so for all we think we've learned getting to this point it almost works against us in terms of making snap judgements, and for all the desire to stay active who's got the time to make the time?

hope springs eternal

Ahh...opening day. (**) Is there a better combination of words to capture the essence of early April? Every team's in first place, nothing but blue skies, green grass and 162 games of promise ahead until October.


Will this be the year the Braves finally don't win the NL East? (yeah, I'm calling you out Darren). For the record, I don't see the Phils winning it this year, maybe (and it pains me no end to say this) the Mets.

Will the A's finally get over the hump?

Will the steroid investigation (more stupidity from Selig) dominate talk and relegate what happens the on the field to the background? Or will the players take control of the game? Will the Giants season be nothing but a circus? Will anyone care when Bonds passes Ruth?


** yeah, yeah...the openers are technically at night this year. still, it's the first day of the season...opening day.

april fools fun from google

Not as grand as an outpost on the Moon, but damned funny nonetheless. Particularly the "tour".

pure pop goodness

The Essex Green - Don’t Know Why (You Stay)

On myspace, with more song samples.

(via you aint no picasso)